Everyday Signs

Notes from semioticians scrutinizing a protein ad, morning chores, and matcha.

Here are some glimpses that surface cultural undercurrents and show how semiotics weaves its way through everyday life.

I hope you enjoy these recent, mini insights from our network: Smedes Scovil analyzes an ad for David protein bars that reveals something about wellness in America. Emily Hayes checks in on the invisible labor of working mothers that so easily creeps into the morning shuffle, and Carla Moss questions the hype and obsession behind matcha; is it a fleeting trend or part of something bigger?

These three dispatches come from across the Sisterhood: Smedes in New York, Emily in London, and Carla in Vienna. Together they trace how meaning circulates through what we eat and drink and how we perform our daily chores.

🍫 Health As Currency
from Smedes Scovil — New York, USA

Like many of you, I’ve been thinking about protein… Namely, what’s driving our seemingly limitless desire for it and what that says about us in this moment.

Backed by experts like Peter Attia, the brand, David, has made a name for itself among those willing to pay more for premium health and wellness products. While protein bars are nothing new, David has taken an attention-grabbing approach.

Semiotic Image Analysis — David Protein Bar

What It Signals

We’ve entered a new era of health as a marker of status, where the assumption is that those with means should be investing in their wellbeing. In the US, this is complicated by several factors, not least of which being the current skepticism of long-standing authorities in science and health. As the push for more self-governance in this arena meets with crumbling health infrastructure and the high cost of care, the overall social and political context in which this image arrives is one in which individuals are seeking alternative means of maintaining health.

Questions for brands:

• As the fixation on longevity takes hold, how do we show that our product supports consumers’ short- and long-term goals?

• If consumers have access to unlimited personal data and AI to make sense of it, how do we communicate our worth?

• In a crowded category centered on a key nutrient (protein, in this case), how to we tell a new and interesting story?

👉 Read the full decode and discussion on LinkedIn →
Or learn about Smedes’s work here →

🧺 A Weighty PE Kit
from Emily Hayes — London, UK

I hair-dried a PE Kit this morning...

Familiar to anyone else on here? 7am, PE kit left on the line in the overnight. The shout up the stairs: ‘Muuuuuumm...’

As I sat there getting overheated, I managed to congratulate myself: this is the first time in 18 years of work-kids juggling that I’d dropped this particular ball. Get me!

Then I caught my emphasis on the ‘I’: I was the one in the frame for this (not my husband or my youngest, a very capable nearly 15 yr old): I was the one thinking it through, I was the one finding - and acting on - the solution.

Both said husband, and said teenager would have happily stepped up, but the thinking-through-the solution was mine and mine alone.

If we’re going to shift the mental load on working motherhood, we need to shift the way we talk - and think - about ourselves too. It was a strangely contemplative way to start the day. Anyone else feeling the load this week?

👉 Read the full discussion on LinkedIn →
Or learn about Emily’s work here →

🍵 Meaningful Matcha
from Carla Moss — Vienna, Austria

When presenting a piece of Semiotic research, I often encounter one question that brand managers struggle to understand: how to know if something is a fleeting trend, or a meaningful cultural movement worth chasing?

Do you imitate aesthetics for a short-term appeal to your TikTok audience, or do you follow the underlying shifts and invest in long term relevance?

We often confuse trends (short-lived hypes) with cultural shifts (deeper long-term change).

Take MATCHA: TikTok made matcha cool, but the hype grew in a context of underlying currents: fascination with Japan as a “must see” travel destination + the bigger trend of wellness and mindfulness.

The drink might fade (especially since we’re drinking matcha into extinction 🙈 ), but the cultural shift can predict what’s next.

Trend vs. Cultural Shift: Understanding the difference changes how you spot what lasts

👉 Read the full discussion on LinkedIn →

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